In fact, World War I is known as the chemist’s war. Additionally, the horrors and abuse of science was clearly manifested in Word War I, where for the first time in human history chemical warfare occurred on a massive scale. From 1918 to 1919 anywhere between 21.5 and 40 million people died world-wide as a result of the influenza pandemic, with approximately 675,000 Americans included in this estimate of global mortality. Written in 1920, the apocalyptic nature of “Nyarlathotep” is certainly a product of it’s time. While applied science certainly has its benefits associated with medicine, agriculture and transportation, HPL witnessed incidents in the early 1900’s that to him signaled the decline of western civilization, much of this associated with science. However, I believe HPL had many concerns about applied science – using science in some capacity, typically associated with technology. Thus, basic science – science for the sake of increasing our knowledge of our world and universe – seemed like a noble endeavor to HPL. HPL seemed to marvel at new discoveries, whether they were from interstellar space, investigations into the nature of the atom or from the Antarctic. HPL saw writing as something that one does to convey an artistic idea, mood or feeling and that writing for the sake of earning a living was beneath a “true artist.” In a sense, he felt the same way about science. However, this love was similar to that he had for writing. In addition, his love of chemistry early on in life, later followed with an obsession of astronomy also conveys HPL’s love for science. Nyarlathotep (LMN El Faraon Negro found on )Īs I discussed in a previous article on HPL’s Materialism Philosophy, one of the primary reasons he decided not to commit suicide after the death of his grandfather in 1904 was his scientific curiosity – to know about the world and universe he inhabits. However, if you review his letters and essays, as well as examine the level of detail and effort he exerted in ensuring that the most scientifically accurate (for the time) data were included in his tales, a more complex view of HPL’s attitude toward science emerges. Reading HPL’s tales alone one may get the impression that he did not like nor trust science the first paragraph in “The Call of Cthulhu” certainly gives this impression. Nyarlathotep…Pharaoh…Crawling Chaos by King Ovrats (The story came to HPL in a dream where a good friend of his, Samuel Loveman, said about Nyarlathotep, “He is horrible – horrible beyond anything you can imagine – but wonderful.” This idea of something holding both horror and wonder is cited a number of times in the actual tale where the narrator’s friend said, “…and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries.” Also, “My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings…” As Kenneth Hite state’s, “It’s in “Nyarlathotep” that we get Lovecraft’s full-blown Apocalypse ( Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales, 2011). The narrator stumbles out of the show with others where the universe itself seems to falling apart ( An H.P. During one of these exhibitions, where the narrator of the story is in attendance, a film is seen essentially showing the destruction of the world. In the tale Nyarlathotep a strange individual named Nyarlathotep comes out of Egypt during a global period of “political and social upheaval” to give exhibitions of electricity and psychology with the use of strange instruments of glass and metal. However, this entity can also be thought of as HPL’s manifested and opposing feelings of wonder and fear when it came to science. In this article we will specifically focus on the tale of “Nyarlathotep.” Of all of HPL’s Old Ones, Nyarlathotep is the most anthropomorphic (at least at times). Lovecraft, 2014) Nyarlathotep appears as a character in six of HPL’s tales: “Nyarlathotep,” “The Rats in the Walls.” “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” “The Dreams in the Witch House,” “The Haunter of the Dark,” and one of the sonnets in “The Fungi From Yuggoth.” However, HPL also mentions Nyarlathotep in “The Shadow Out of Time” and the revision tale “The Mound,” which was ghostwritten for Zealia Bishop. Nyarlathotep is one of Lovecraft’s most well known and more frequently cited entities (possibly second only to Cthulhu). Shot from the film Nyarlathotep (Directed by Christian Matzke 2001)
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